What do you want to be when you grow up?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I filled notebooks with stories, complete with a title page, dedication and illustrations.
Early efforts included a story titled “Garfield’s Rest,” which involved the kidnapping of the famed cartoon feline, and “The Horrible Witch’s Revenge,” which ended with the melodramatic line “I started to cry, with tears streaming down my face like rain but tasting of the sea.”
My childhood heroes were Jo March from “Little Women,” Anne of the “Green Gables” books, and Laura Ingalls from the “Little House” series — feisty girls who wrote their own futures. They remain among my favorites, the stories I remember vividly, viscerally, though I’ve come to understand that aspects of those books are problematic.
More often, people may end up in a position that children don’t know exist (see: marketer, middle manager or salesman.) Or maybe the job didn’t even exist until now (see: ride-hailing driver, electric scooter service person).
As I was graduating from college, I applied for journalism jobs, and after a string of rejections, I submitted my resume to the management consultants who were recruiting on campus. The interviewer presented me with a question — an embarrassingly easy one — to see how and if I could puzzle out the answer.
“How do you price a cup of coffee?” she asked.
After a long pause, I said. “There’s the costs that change ... and the costs that don’t change.”
“Fixed costs,” she said, her tone kind. “Electricity. The coffee beans. Renting the space,” I rattled off, trying to think of every expense at such an enterprise.
I didn’t get a second interview, and never had a chance to prove my mettle with spreadsheets and PowerPoints and core competencies. It was all for the best and, fortunately, I landed a journalism job soon after.
In this season of college graduations, I’ve been thinking about the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
My twin sons have ideas of their own, and we’ve encouraged their exploration even if they most likely won’t end up in that profession.
In kindergarten, the boys learned about community helpers — teachers, firefighters, doctors and nurses — to which Gege also added, “woodcutter,” someone who could clear downed trees. There were heavy winds and rains that year, which led to many fallen branches in the street, and perhaps that inspired him.
All through first grade, he’s maintained that he wanted to be a woodcutter, even though we’ve warned him the work was hard and dangerous. To my surprise and delight, last month Russell Research Station — a 283-acre facility of the UC Berkeley’s Center for Forestry, located near the rolling hills of Briones Regional Park — opened to the public for a day.
Along with learning about redwood tree genetics, burn piles and the importance of thinning trees for forest management, we marveled at an exhibition by the Cal Logging Sports Team. The women — all students in the university’s forestry program — were formidable, standing on a stump and chopping all the way through, slicing a log with a two-person saw and racing through an obstacle course. Even though we live in a machine age, it was satisfying to see what the students could achieve with their skill and might.
Gege and Didi were allowed to hold an ax — carefully! — and they put on protective chain mail socks and climbed over the logs on the course, while we clapped and cheered. Much fun, and a field I never would have learned much about if Gege hadn’t been interested.
Didi dreams of being a coal miner, even though we’ve also warned about its dangers. In one of the video games he likes, he acquires coal mines, and he’s also seen episodes of “Gold Rush,” the reality television show about gold miners set in Alaska.
For Didi, mining must represent adventure and the wonder of pulling riches straight from the ground. And so our family took an expedition to the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve in Antioch, which recently expanded its quarter-mile underground tour, which starts at the Hazel-Atlas Portal and ends at the Greathouse Visitor Center.
From the 1850s until the turn of the 20th century, miners dug for coal, and from the 1920s to 1940s, they excavated silica sand. We donned hard hats and brandished flashlights, walking along the tracks that used to carry out the loads of sand that would be used to make glass. The air smelled cool and fresh, and I placed my hand against the crumbly walls, what remained from of a vast inland sea from millions of years ago. I was grateful, once again, for my children leading me on escapades I might have put off or otherwise wouldn’t have considered — part of the job description for parents that I didn’t know until I became one.
What do you want to be when you grew up?